Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 January 1875 — Poverty. [ARTICLE]

Poverty.

Poverty is a great curse, despite of all the fine sentiment we hear about it from people in warm homes, who are well fed, and have good clothes on their backs. It embitters manhood; it saturates woman’s heart with gall. It begets envy and fretfulness with one’s lot; it makes men roll fiery eyes and utter hard speeches on the good of others, only because it is not their own. It furrows the face of beauty with crow’s-feet or unsoftened lines of care. It makes its victims hard-hearted, hard-faced and quarrelsome in speech and conduct. It robs the heart of all refining influences by taking away all means of culture. It puts intellect and taste on the treadmill in quest for bread. It makes the soul go on all-fours to furnish food for the body. It chains a man’s nobility to his stomach, which goads him to desperation by its unappeased cravings. And through all this man sinks at best to the levei of a rational brute. We believe that it was a bitter trial to Jesus who had to endure it but temporarily, not because His soul did not shudder at it, but because it was one among the many wretched conditions surrounding His mortal existence; and He bore it merely to show that if it could not be enjoyed, it could be borne with patience, and it behooved Him, the Captain of our salvation, to be perfect through sufferings. No sadder exclamation ever fell from His lips, drawn by His necessities, as if from an almost intolerable sense of dejection and debasement—“ The birds of the air have nests [perches], and the foxes have holes, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.” It was a bitter necessity that drew such a confession, and it needed all His divine meekness and patience to bear it. There is a heartless affectation in the flippant way many people talk about this thing. It is neither honest, intelligent, nor heartful. Poverty is of itself a curse. It is true that divine grace can extract some good out of even curses, but the curses are not the blessings, but the grace. Poverty is often more the mother of temptation than wealth. It is often a teacher of lies and of the cunning and abandonment of theft. It sends men often to the bottle in the vain hope of finding in its fiery contents that unconsciousness which is a wretched substitute for the griping want. Adversity will toughen the fibers of endurance and bring'” a kind Of grim patience. It will make our wills more determined and imperious, but it takes gieat grace to get out of it anything amiable , tender, loving and happy. The soul is not tortured into goodness. The frozen, ungenial earth, soon to be the sepulcher of earth’s life and beauties, is not melted into drops or its frozen hands so relaxed as to let go summer’s bless* ingq by the raging March winds, or the descent of stinging sleet, or the hoary breath of midnight frosts. No. no. It is the smiling face of the returning sun that does this It is the kindly kisses of the south wind and the sunny teardrops of April clouds which make the earth repent of its coldness, and send its heartless iye away, leaping down the rivulets, to hide in the ocean, or to obey the sun’s commands to the slumbering forms of beauty and fragrance. Loose them and let them go. Then, brethren, give up romancing

about the blessings of poverty. This is* as vain as to put life in a corpse by putting a wreath of flowers on its frozen head. Set yourselves to work with a will to relieve it. This is the way to let Christ live in you, by letting His love shine through you. Every church ought to begin Dorcas work. Every family ought to begin eoonomy for the needy during the coming months of this awful winter. Economy to the rich, for Christ’s sake, is as great a virtue as poverty unrelieved is a curse to the poor. What a grand opportunity distress affords for the growth or love in your souls, and what a school for pity in the hearts of your children !— Presbyterian.